Nvidia Graphics interview

Aptitude test consisted of 4 sections: First section includes basic languages like C, C++. Second section includes questions on Operating System. Third section includes questions on Data Structures. And the last section includes logical questions or puzzles.

- No negative Marking, No time limit for separate sections (all sections combined) and No sectional cut-offs C/C++:

Round1:

The interviewer started with the same open minded question ”Tell me about your self” .You have to be prepared for such type of question and mainly focus on your skills what the company needs.Then he removed the aptitude paper and asked why I scored less marks in OS. Be frank as much as possible and say what went wrong during that section. He then asked me on my resume (each and every project listed in the resume). He asked me questions on OS one after the other such as:

Q1. What are various synchronization techniques in os? Q2. What is semaphore, mutex ,monitor? Q3. Difference between the above three. I explained each and every concept with an example. Q4. Write a function to reverse a string in C. I first took time to think and then explained him what I was thinking for the problem and then wrote the code for that and then explained the code. Q5. According to you how much did u score in each section of the apti? Which was ur best section? (Here may be they were trying to find whether we cleared the apti just by guessing or we knew the answers) Q6. A lot of questions on C concepts. sizeof, malloc, calloc, small and big endian, pointers. Q7. What does volatile int i declaration mean? Q8. Swapping two variables: Four methods- • Using XOR operator- Best method • Using assignment op- 2nd best method but uses a temp variable • Using addition and subtraction • Using multiplication and division ( Last two methods like the first one doesn‟t use a temp variable but wont work in all cases) Q9. Projects you have worked on. Explain it. And what have you learned from it Q10. OS concepts. Semaphores, binary semaphores, mutex, mutual exclusion, consumer producer problem, monitors, deadlock, threads, processes, inter-thread communication, their difference, paging, segmentation, fragmentation, physical memory, virtual memory. Q11. Interrupts, interrupt handling. Q12. There are 8 bits. Swap the 8th bit with the 7th, 6th with the 5th ,4th with the 3rd and so on. Q13. OOPs concepts. Q14. Given a linked list, using only one iteration find the middle node. Q15. There are 25 horses. Find top 5 fastest horses. Condition- allowed only 5 horses in a race.. in how many minimum no of races can u do so?

Round 2 :

This was another 45 min interview. He started with a technical puzzle.

Q1. There are two threads T1 and T2. T1 prints even numbers such as 0,2,4…… and T2 prints odd numbers such as 1,3,5….. Write a program such that the output is 1,2,3,4,5…… Q2. He asked what comes to mind when you hear “Memory management” ? Q3. How process are allocated in the memory? Q4. What if there is a huge program? Q5. What is virtual memory? Q6. How will you implement virtual memory in phones where there is no big memory available ? And many questions on OS. Q7. What comes to mind when you hear “image” . Q8. Convolution in image processing. The interviewer asked if I want to ask sum questions ? You should ask questions mainly about the company.

A puzzle given to me :

Once upon a time, the electricity on the north and south sides of campus was completely unconnected. In those days, there was an enormous mountain, ThompsonPeak, where College Hill Roadis now. Travel between the two sides of campus took weeks, and many brave students lost their lives traversing the great range. In those days, each student had to come to campus with his or her own work-mule to carry supplies for the great trek between the library on the north side of campus and the dorms on the south.

Before Thompson peak was leveled, then-president Johanne Chamberlain declared that the electricity on the two sides of campus should be connected. The heroic men and women of physical plant took two years to dig a small conduit, and inserted 501 identical wires between the two sides. Unfortunately, they neglected to leave any indication of which wire ends on the north side corresponded to which ends on the south side. The mountain settled on top of the tunnel, and there was no way to remove the wires. A new tunnel would take another two years to dig. And, since this was in the days before telephones or helicopters, the only way to figure out which south-side ends corresponded to which north-side ends was to send an electrical signal through wires on one side, and then travel to the other side to see which wires were live on the other end.

Your challenge is to travel back in time to help the workers identify the ends of the wires on each side. You must minimize the number of trips required across Thompson peak in order to label each wire, from 1 to 501, with matching numbers on each side. You are permitted to connect wires on one side or the other. Connected wires will conduct electricity through the connection. But, you have only one voltage source. You can connect or disconnect as many wires, and as often, as you please. Solutions must contain complete instructions and the minimum number of trips.

question: What would be the minimum number of trips be if there were “n” wires?

HR Interview:

I was asked to fill a form. This was just a casual talk

–How was the day? –How was the interviews? –What is your interest and passion? –Tell me about your family –What you think actually nvidia does? –Do you have a specific domain to work in ? –Why nvidia? –Do u have any plan for further studies? –What about shifting to Pune?

Thanks Vikas (Bitian) for contributing this article.

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